Congratulations to the first Australian ascensionist of Punks in the Gym for his award of the PM Science prize for his work on the structure of the universe. More to physics than climbing alone reveals...

On 13/10/2011 wallwombat wrote:>there is a long history of science nerds who climb well..>>>John Gill? Mikl's missus? Stugang? Dave Filan?

I'm going to claim this as pure force of numbers. When I was in AUMC, I was the only arts student in a club of engineering and science students. Now, can someone explain why it is that climbing attracts engineers and scientists? And bags out sociologists?

On 14/10/2011 Wendy wrote:>On 13/10/2011 wallwombat wrote:>>there is a long history of science nerds who climb well..>>>>>>John Gill? Mikl's missus? Stugang? Dave Filan?>>I'm going to claim this as pure force of numbers. When I was in AUMC,>I was the only arts student in a club of engineering and science students.> Now, can someone explain why it is that climbing attracts engineers and>scientists? And bags out sociologists?

Arts students are too busy shagging to worry about meaningless things like climbing. Engineers need something to do other than thinking about shagging.

Jokes aside. Firstly I think you need a bit of the obsessive compulsive to get really good at anything. I'm sure I've seen reports/studies that say scientists are more likely to be (and/or) have kids with autism/asbergers, think I have also seen something similar about climbers (or I could be getting mixed up with dyslexia)

Secondly, the further you get toward the pure math purity spectrum of "science" the harder it is to bullshit. You're either right or wrong, just like climbing - you get up or you don't....live or don't. If you fail you fail, no room for hurt feelings or different perspectives or interpretations....you suck.

addendum....same goes for team sports where you can be best on field in a losing team. Can't do that with climbing.... come to think of it...is that why simey took up footy?

On 15/10/2011 wallwombat wrote:>On 14/10/2011 climberman wrote:>>>Is dave a science geek as well ? His dad tried to teach me stats at uni>>(poor bastard).>>No. I was taking the piss.

?
Ah, come on ww; now you really are taking the p!ss.
~> I’d bet good money that you have heard Dave make a dissertation or two...
& I know for a fact that he has the answers to lots of nerdy things!
☻

Personally think the whole arts/science divide is a bit of a furfy - I was just trying to work with the lovely ms eden's lead. The only thing I'd say is that through my years I have had many interesting conversations about music, literature and art with "scientists" yet very few interesting conversations about 'science" with those from the so called arts.

Wendy - how many of those Engineers in the AUMC ended up doing anything of note climbingwise. I started climbing with people that turned out to be engineers and they gave up by the time they were 18.

Regardless of whether its arts or science I do think that to get good at something you need to be a bit obsessive. And finally, I'd also put philosophy in the same bucket as pure maths - which makes us in agreement.

The link is that people who have PhDs have clearly spent most of their time at university doing nothing of any real value but then ponce around claiming they're good at something, which is the same thing that climbers do

Stuart has a point, that most of those engineering/science students ended up abandoning climbing after Uni. So my new theory is that they needed something to take their minds off the tedium of their course for the duration. Or climbing trips were a good excuse for lots of drinking, which engineering student did seem to excel at.

My new theory on the phds is that a long career as a student enables much climbing. This alone makes it worth pursuing a phd. I expect there is also a fair collection of unfinished phds in the climbing community or phds that took the full 8 years or so allowed to finish, because the much climbing got in the way of actually writing stuff.